Better facilities at Kerala colleges to woo ‘foreign’ students
KOCHI: The state government plans to attract students from overseas from the next academic year by improving facilities at government colleges besides allowing new courses, Minister for Higher Education K T Jaleel said on Friday.
From the next academic year, one university in the state should have at least 100 overseas students, he said, after laying the foundation stone for the new block of the Honours Degree course under the Economic Department at Maharaja’s College, Ernakulam. The government also hopes to attract more students in its colleges from other states.
“The students in Kerala should have a situation where they would want to pursue higher education within the state itself. The government will also undertake a campaign to spread the message the campuses in Kerala are safe,” he said. There is no discrimination in the state’s colleges on the basis of caste, religion or other matters, he added.
The government also plans to make applying in the state’s colleges simple through a single application, wherein the students can apply for all the universities in Kerala. “From next academic year, the state will implement a single-window application in all the colleges here,” Jaleel said.
Talking about the bad state of affairs of the engineering colleges in the state, he said out of the 55,000 engineering seats, 50 per cent are vacant. Only in 12 colleges the entrance exams are conducted on time.